Bile, hatred, moronic comments and the apologists of the Guardian

This could be a long one. Sometimes events occur that stir feelings and reactions in oneself that lead to a tipping point where frustration or annoyance spills over into genuine rage and the loss of self control. That has happened this afternoon.

I’m not given to writing profanity, but on this occasion perhaps it is understandable. Forgive me. Or don’t. At this moment in time I really don’t care. I’ll try to write in a lucid way but if the words make no sense try to understand I’m in a temper and writing this is an attempt to regain control.

The events in question put the puerile bollockspeak of a showboating moronic wanker like David Cameron into its proper context. Readers may recall Cameron’s grandstanding to the audience and his wooden theatrics when he declared that:

it makes me physically ill to contemplate giving the vote to prisoners.

Really? We are to supposed to believe that Cameron felt the physical sensation of nausea in reaction to the prospect of prisoners getting the vote? Oh fuck right off. If you believe that bullshit there’s no hope for you. If something like that made Cameron feel ‘physically ill’ then no one should provide him with the details of what happened in Cairo to CBS television reporter Lara Logan. He will probably puke up all over this bloody Downing Street cat that seems to be the political story of the week. God knows, the details have made me feel physically ill. And unlike that useless sack of shit I’m not saying that for bloody effect.

For a couple of days the news has been circulating that Logan is recovering in hospital in the US after she was beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob while covering the Egyptian protests. The words beaten and sexually assaulted covers a wide range of injuries and completely sanitises the extent of what happened. Read on if you’ve got the stomach for it:

“60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, “Jew! Jew!” as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo’s main square Friday, CBS and sources said yesterday.

The TV crew with Logan, who is also the network’s chief foreign correspondent, had its cameras rolling moments before she was dragged off — and caught her on tape looking tense and trying to head away from a crowd of men behind her in Tahrir Square.

“Logan was covering the jubilation . . . when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration,” CBS said in a statement. “It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy.

“In the crush of the mob, [Logan] was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.

“She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning,” the network added. “She is currently in the hospital recovering.”

A network source told The Post that her attackers were screaming, “Jew! Jew!” during the assault. And the day before, Logan had told Esquire.com that Egyptian soldiers hassling her and her crew had accused them of “being Israeli spies.” Logan is not Jewish.

In Friday’s attack, she was separated from her colleagues and attacked for between 20 to 30 minutes, The Wall Street Journal said.

Her injuries were described to The Post as “serious.”

If these details are accurate, she was dragged away, terrified, by a hate filled mob in full view of the public, she was mercilessly beaten as they screamed ‘Jew’ at her and she was brutally raped time and again during that 20-30 minutes. This is the the sort of story that makes someone feel physically ill. We cannot begin to imagine what that poor woman went through, the fear, the pain, the violation, the loss of her dignity, the not knowing whether she would even survive.

But the revulsion I feel has been compounded by an American journalist darling of the left called Nir Rosen. This self important bastard took to his Twitter account to indulge his desire to spew his bile and demonstrate what a free thinker he is, without knowing the facts. This is a sample of what he is reported to have said:

The initial tweet by Rosen stated, “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson [CNN journalist Anderson Cooper, who had recently been roughed up and threatened with beheading by a similar Egyptian mob]. Where was her buddy McCrystal.” From this tweet he went further, writing that he would have been amused if Anderson Cooper had also been sexually assaulted.

“Yes yes its wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too,” wrote Rosen.

The two comments gave way to more. Rosen called Logan a “war monger” and expressed doubt that she was actually assaulted.

“Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger” wrote Rosen

He carried on, probably after being cautioned by other Tweeters:

“Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women, which is still wrong, but if it was worse than [sic] I’m sorry.”

Rosen clarified his initial reference to former American commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal, writing that the assault should serve as a reminder of Logan’s “role glorifying war and condemning Rolling Stone’s Hastings while defending McChrystal.”

Then came a quasi-apology by Rosen: “ah fuck it, I apologize for being insensitive, it’s always wrong, that’s obvious, but I’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she will get.”

Oh yes, he’s sorry now, after that grudging and mealy mouthed excuse for an apology. He wouldn’t have said it if he had realised how serious it was apparently. Maybe he shouldn’t have said it in the first place. Attention seeking wanker. What a sick bastard he is, only thinking about his jealousy at the likely attention Logan would receive. He clearly has some kind of mental issue. Needless to say this vicious and arrogant smear of shit has subsequently lost his job as fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security. Quite right too. His comments are utterly indefensible.

At least I would have thought they were. But no. In my ignorance of the depth of camaraderie among left wing journalists I hadn’t reckoned on some other self important left wing blowhard acting as an apologist for Rosen and spewing forth in an attempt to deflect attention from Rosen on to someone else by way of an attack on a vicious and spiteful right wing blogger, Debbie Schlussel, for her own equally sick diatribe at Logan.

Step forward apologist in chief Michael Tomasky of the Guardian. Quelle fucking surprise. What is it about the people that work at that bloody paper? It is a cesspool of disaffected, self satisfied hubris furthering its insipid agenda with a level of spite that exceeds human comprehension.

I expected you’ve heard the hideous news that Lara Logan of CBS News, above, was sexually assaulted in Cairo. And I expect you’ve heard that Nir Rosen, the left-leaning journalist who is like Logan a war correspondent, distastefully joked about it on Twitter. You’re probably less likely to have heard about Debbie Schlussel’s comments, more on which later.

Yeah that’s right. What Tomasky is saying is Rosen is evil, but look, I’ve found a right winger who is even worse. So you can’t be too hard on my fellow traveller. He dribbles on:

Rosen, who has written for Rolling Stone, the New Yorker and various other publications, lost a prestigious fellowship at the New York University Center for Law and Security because of his tweets. He has been issuing apologies left and right, most notably in this interview with Media Bistro, where he went far beyond the usual bromides:

Oh stop, he was clearly so wonderful and all this is so unfair and you’re breaking my fucking heart. No one forced him to open his gobshite mouth.

There’s a great deal more in that vein. A great deal.

Rosen has some controversial views, but he is a reporter who goes into war zones.

You are fucking kidding me, right? He goes into war zones? So this gives him some kind of free pass to make the vicious, spiteful and contemptuous comments he did about Lara Logan? Onto the Guardianista moral equivalence then:

Schlussel is a right-wing blogger whose specialty is fulmination, I believe from Michigan, about the subhuman qualities of Arabs.

And this lessens the sheer depth of bile Rosen doled out on Twitter does it? Only a Guardian based conceited apologist wanker could have the brass neck to offer this up:

Rosen (whom I know very slightly, and ran into in the BBC Washington office not long ago) said some deeply unconscionable things and deserves a healthy stretch in the penalty box. But at least he’s remorseful about what he said. Schlussel is plainly an egomaniac and in an update to her original post just laid it on even more thickly.

So that’s alright then. You ran into him at the BBC – where else would left wing tossers like you be? – so you’re qualified to act as his PR. Both deserve equal condemnation, but the moral equivalence here is digusting. And to defend him you have to draw parallels with a hate filled woman? Doesn’t that tell you something? No, you’re probably so far up your own arse you can’t rationalise that. That’s why you have to resort to bullshit like this to defend your pal while attacking a competitor of the Guardian, a competitor of the BBC and a competitor of the New York Times, you opportunist bastard:

We live in an age in which every instant thought can be sent out into the world. Some people try to learn from it. Others take advantage of it for the purpose of spreading their name. What odds should I lay down that Murdoch properties Fox News or the New York Post, where Schlussel appears, will make her submit to any penalty?

Rosen is incapable of controlling himself but you try to defend him. This is the kind of stuff that makes one feel physically ill. Not one word of concern for Lara Logan from Tomasky, just a biased agenda to pursue. I’m still feeling the nausea now. If there is a hell I hope the scum like Rosen, Schlussel and Tomasky end up there. Cameron can go there too for his pathetic exaggerations that cheapen the impact of stories of real suffering.

My thoughts and best wishes are with Lara after the appalling trauma she has suffered. I hope that when her body has healed the psychological pain will be the least it possibly can be.

15 Responses to “Bile, hatred, moronic comments and the apologists of the Guardian”

It is one thing to critisise Logan as a reporter, it is a whole other and illuminatingly despicable game to play in reveling in her misfortune as some have done.

In this attack Logan was not competing with her peers. It was not an opportunity for others to make hay at her expense, unlike say, passing comment on her conduct in Afghanistan or wherever.

I think there is a distinct difference between the comments from Rosen and from Schlussel. Rosen is belittling Lara Logan directly. Schussel is merely unsympathetic and exploiting Logan’s plight as a springboard to something else.

He he. Sometimes profanity demands to be heard. Michael “Tu Quoque” Tomasky has extended form as an apologist for lefties committing the same offences against PC that he would bitterly condemn in anyone else.

I’m sick to f**king death of this narrative that it is the ‘left’ who are “nice” and the ‘right’ who are “nasty”. I especially hate how “right-wing” is appended to statements and references to make them appear worse for some reason.

This kind of moral eqivalence reminds me of the apologists for Respect, who saw no grave ill in the fact that the party would pander to Islamists by separating the men and women at meetings and failing to criticise overt displays of sexism and homophobia.

When I first heard about the attack on Lara Logan, my first thought was, “Did she have her head covered, and if so, in what style?”

You see, one of the salient points, to me at least, was that very few women appeared in the published photographs of the crowds in Tahrir Square.

So my assumption was that she had strayed into an area where it was injudicious for her to go. A bit like being blown up in a mine field – very sad, but a somewhat inevitable once you pass the warning signs.

However, I kept those thoughts to myself, and I certainly did not fire off a raft of tweets over the matter, for they could only do more harm, and absolutely no good at all.

So, you are right to be angry, and especially so since others are trying to defend the indefensible. They are idiots.

Some of us end up in war zones, and we see and experience things that we are then doomed to carry within us for the rest of our lives.

Now that the fog has lifted somewhat, I can see and freely admit, that my initial analysis was wrong.

I truly feel for Ms Logan, and I would like to say thank you to you, for being so honest about your feelings, and sharing them with us, on her behalf.

DB, that BBC twitter you refer makes my blood boil as much as AM’s. I see the BBC as far, far, FAR worse than the Guardian. The wierdos who read the Guardan choose to buy it. We mugs have no such freedom over the BBC and it employs the same spiteful, hateful, self loathing leftist sociopaths as the paper. I hate the BBC with a venom which surprises me. Yes, I know I can go and vent on Biased BBC, but this is my miediate reaction to this very passionate missive from AM. More power to him.

The disgusting idiots at the Gurndian and their blood brothers at the BBC and the world of the left group think they inhabit really have no moral compass to judge others against ! so it is not very surprising they just blurt out the first stupid crass and mind numbingly cretinous thing that jump to the front of their very small brains knowing full well their statements cannot be attacked! as they and their mates control the right to reply , it’s as hateful as predictable that they protect their own just look at the way they covered the Palin Rape jokes which the left leaner’s called “manufactured outrage” unlike ‘outrage’ which only right thinking people do!
AM everything you wrote sums up my feelings on this totally !

AM, I share your bitter and heart felt fury, but can I change the story? We have slowly allowed women to enroll in our armed forces, presumably accepting that even if they are not in the front line, that numbers will be captured when bases are over run: we can’t always be on the winning side, continually advancing. The reaction of Russian soldiers towards women as they approached Berlin in the last war typifies what a horde of virile young men will do when confronted with female prisoners. No amount of Geneva Convention or whatever, will prevent the inevitable. It might massage the military statistics to fill the ranks with young girls but will our society have to wait until such an horrific mass rape occurs before it grasps the utter blnd folly of it?

I believe in true equality. If a woman wants to serve in a front line role then it’s only fair they are allowed to do so – providing they pass exactly the same physical requirements, skill at arms etc. But having served I personally do not like the idea of women in the front line in harm’s way. There are many men who would be distracted in close quarter combat because of their desire to protect a woman in their section, moreso than another male colleague, regardless of the need for discipline. It is human nature. If such a mass rape did occur I doubt news of it would be allowed to leak out.

I am reminded of the article Robert Fisk wrote that gave rise to the uber-blogging verb, “to fisk”. (Note to pedants: yes, the actually holier-than-thou-ery was in the article afterwards rather than in the attack itself, but the point holds I think)

I share your exploding rage at all of this and, as WitteringWitney observes, it is your blog, you write as you wish (feel, in this case).
However, a parable…
Years ago a friend and I became entangled in a protracted legal dispute with erstwhile colleagues which resulted in the exchange of dozens of letters. A process evolved – quite unplanned – whereby one of us would produce a furioso draft packed with adjectives and adverbs which the other would edit to a dry, boring text which could be objected to only on the grounds of content not presentation. Of course, we were writing ‘for the record’ should the dispute ever come to court but still…

1. You will be quoted out of context.

2. Opponents may shift the debate away from the facts to your ‘immoderate language’.